xxvi INSECTA : HYMENOPTERA 429 



them also into the dark. In an hour or so the light room will 

 be deserted, and the ants will all be very busy caring for the 

 transported young, cleaning and feeding them, and excavating in 

 the earth special chambers for them. Now the empty room may 

 be arranged attractively, and food introduced, either a drop of 

 honey, or a dead fly, or a piece of banana skin, -and then a dark 

 cover should be left partly covering this part of the nest also, so 

 that the ants may be tempted to come back to feed. 



The further care of the nest will consist in keeping the store 

 of food replenished, and also in taking care that the earth does not 

 get dry. Every week it will probably be found necessary to let a 

 little water run in through a door left for this purpose in the 

 nursery chamber. If a more thorough sprinkling of water, or 

 rearranging of the earth, is necessary, the ants can all be induced 

 to go into the playground, carrying the young with them, merely by 

 exposing the nursery chamber to bright light, whilst the playground 

 is kept dark. 



Various experiments may be tried in such a nest, e.g. strips of 

 different coloured glass may replace the uniformly dark cover in 

 general use, and so the preference of the ants for certain colours 

 ascertained. Root Aphides, or the special beetle pets favoured by 

 the Yellow Meadow Ant, may be introduced, and their treatment 

 by the ants watched ; and other experiments, such as those described 

 by Lord Avebury in Ants, Bees, and Wasps, may be repeated. 



2. The Common Wood Ant (Formica rufd) should also be 

 kept for a short time in a special observation nest, but this nest 

 must be of quite a different type. A box, a foot square, with 

 wooden bottom, glass sides, and a freely perforated zinc top, answers 

 well. A mound should be made of the pine needles, and some 

 thirty ants, with the queen and young if possible, introduced ; 

 but even the workers alone are worth keeping for a time, for they 

 are so large that their methods of burrowing, of feeding, and, above 

 all, of cleaning themselves, can be clearly seen, and are most 

 interesting. They should be drawn in as many different positions 

 as possible. 



3. From a dead ant, slides should be made of each leg and of 

 the head, and from these the points of structure mentioned in the 

 text should be verified under a microscope, and illustrative sketches 

 made. 



